From the outside, Shabana Azeez's career reads like an overnight success story. The 28-year-old was seemingly plucked from obscurity to land a role in the Emmy-winning US medical drama The Pitt. But back home in Australia — on the Gold Coast, specifically, where she's in town for the 2026 AACTA Awards — it’s clear her trajectory has been anything but instantaneous.

Growing up in Adelaide to Fijian-Indian parents, acting wasn’t exactly considered a viable career choice. Her parents, like many first-generation migrants, wanted stability for their daughter: “You are Asian. Grow up. Have a real job,” she recalls being reminded.

By the end of Year 12, they relented just enough to allow her to audition for one drama school – and if she didn’t get in, that would be that. Azeez’s nerves got the better of her on the way to the audition; she crashed her car and failed to make it past the first round. Rather than letting this derail her completely she pivoted, enrolling in an arts degree. “I learned how to be unemployed,” she laughs.

Her breakthrough didn’t come from formal training but from a first self-tape that found its way into the hands of now-friends Leela Varghese and Emma Hough Hobbs, and blossomed into creative collaborations including the gloriously titled Lesbian Space Princess. The project, recently recognised at the AACTAs for Best Original Song and Best Indie Film, became a symbol of the offbeat, courageous storytelling that has come to define her early career. “To see a movie called Lesbian Space Princess embraced in Australia? Wild,” she says.

But it was her role in the Emmy-winning medical drama The Pitt that truly marked a turning point. Azeez plays Victoria Javadi, a nepo-student doctor navigating the intensity of a high-stakes hospital environment. While medical dramas are hardly a new genre, The Pitt has resonated because it refuses to sanitise reality: by the end of the season, Azeez tells me, actors wear makeup to look more tired, rather than glamorous. “There’s something about how not glossy it is,” she says. “People just want to see themselves reflected on screen.”

The show’s five 2025 Emmy wins underscore its appeal, but for Azeez, the experience has been about more than accolades — it has been a masterclass in adaptability, and letting go of perfectionism. “I am a recovering perfectionist and people pleaser, and those things are not useful in the world. Specifically creatively,” she says. “Performance isn’t about what you’re capable of, it’s about what happens in the moment and surrendering to that.” The role has also reframed how she approaches her own ambitions. The fantasy of stardom, she notes, is just that: a fantasy. Behind the glamour lie long days, missed birthdays, and relentless travel.

That philosophy carries into her current work. Azeez is in Melbourne filming the SBS drama The Airport Chaplain, a project she describes as both surreal and deeply affirming. “It’s like the cream of the crop of Australian people that I never would have been able to work with a year ago,” she says. “Yesterday, I was talking to the team and thought, ‘God, their last show I couldn’t even get an audition for, and now I’m working with them.’ It’s very exciting to be embraced when I come home.”

But even as her profile rises, Azeez remains deeply aware of the landscape she’s navigating. In Australia, there are still few South Asian actors breaking through, and she knows she’s building her career in largely uncharted territory. She admires the actors who have managed to balance ambition with integrity — Hugo Weaving, Cate Blanchett, and Sarah Snook, for example, whose careers have reached stratospheric heights while maintaining reputations for generosity and creativity.

Still, she is under no illusions that her journey will mirror theirs. Instead, Azeez is focused on building a career on her own terms, choosing projects that challenge her creatively and allow her to maintain her authentic voice. “I don't want to be the girl of the summer," she says. "40 years from now, I want to look back at my career and be like, 'that had integrity. That had a through line. That had a vision. That takes time. And I'm only 28.'”